Chapter 31 Your Answer
THIRTY-ONE
Your Answer
Hutch
Late Wednesday afternoon, Wade pulled up the crime scene tape for Hutch, and Hutch ducked under it.
He thanked Wade but headed right to where Harry was standing.
Harry handed him some protective gear. “For your boots, and need you to put on some gloves. It’s been processed, but protocol.”
Hutch put on the shoe protectors and gloves then walked into one of the houses on The Lion and The Lamb compound.
He whistled.
It wasn’t big but it had a big flat screen. Game console. Nice carpet. Roomy furniture.
And a mess of someone who packed quick and got the hell out.
“I’ll take you to one of the flock’s houses next,” Harry told him. “But safe to say, Enstrom, Burress and their boys didn’t rough it as much as the rest of the congregation did.”
“How did they hide this shit from the others?” Hutch asked.
“They didn’t,” Harry surprised him by saying.
“And you got two different takes on that from the men and the women. The men, it was obvious their leaders would need to remain plugged into the outside world and keep abreast of what was happening. They were devout, but they weren’t Amish.
And anyway, Enstrom convinced them the more you turned your back on worldly things and became one with nature and God, the more grace you’d be earning.
Though, somehow those men thought he was godly, and didn’t put it together he wasn’t doing the same thing. ”
“And the women?”
“Varied. Those two I mentioned who I thought had Stockholm Syndrome actually didn’t.
Found out, they, too, were true believers.
Head down. Do your work. Take care of your man.
Raise your community up. All that shit. The others thought this,”—he threw up a hand—“was just more proof their men were brainless idiots.”
“But those soldiers you talked about lived like this?” Hutch asked.
“The stuff wasn’t as nice, but yeah.”
“How did they explain why those guys had this stuff, and they didn’t?”
“They were unmarried. You only swore off that stuff when you accepted the blessed sanctity of a woman’s hand in marriage. Marriage was the threshold you walked over to start down your righteous path.”
It would never stop surprising Hutch the extent to which people would go just to belong.
Especially if they were conned into thinking they belonged to something important.
“We’re sorting things out,” Harry told him as he motioned Hutch to the door and they both made their way out.
“The most recent drama is four of those men experiencing utter heartbreak when they learned the women Enstrom married them to weren’t legally their wives, considering Enstrom wasn’t ordained.
Those unions are not valid under the eyes of the law, and as such, they have no claim on their women, who have now all taken their chance to get the fuck out of Dodge.
They’re off to the four winds with family having picked them up, hopefully taking them direct to their first session with a therapist.”
Hutch stopped on the way to another house, and Harry stopped with him.
“They’re gone?”
Harry nodded. “They’ll come back to testify.
All but the two true believers have left.
The believers asked to return to their homes here to await their men who’ve been charged and have no hope of making bail.
They’re concerned about the animals. They’re concerned about the garden. They just want to come home.”
Harry looked across the space to where the animals were kept, and Hutch followed his eyes.
He saw instantly the coop and the pigsty had no activity.
“You rehome them?” Hutch asked.
Harry nodded. “They were moved out on Monday.”
“Those women coming back here?” Hutch asked.
Harry shook his head, and Hutch saw then why he was so good at his job.
This whole thing was dicked up, but he felt compassion for those women who’d swallowed a lie.
More of the fallout of Enstrom’s bullshit, because Hutch couldn’t understand being a follower to that extent.
But he did know that those women learning they could never go “home,” and further, that home was never really their home, still had to be heartbreaking.
“As they don’t own these properties, and it’s now up for serious debate who does, I was obliged to say no.
They’re currently over at the shelter in Colby.
Their husbands are being charged with trespass, lumber poaching and unlawful imprisonment, because, even if their wives wanted to be here, they were actively involved in keeping all the women here.
But again, unless they can get their families to step up for them, which so far they haven’t, they’re so horrified by what those men were involved in, those men are gonna stay in jail awhile.
They have no money. They all have no money.
” Harry looked to Hutch. “Before they were accepted into the community, they turned it over to Enstrom.”
“Jesus,” Hutch said through clenched teeth, hoping they found that guy and soon. He was a massive dick.
“Yeah,” Harry agreed.
Hutch started them walking again. “How’s that all playing out?”
“The drama before this latest one was it dawning on all those men they’d been conned. Enstrom and Burress deserting them. Us finding the drugs. They were so openly upset and disturbed by that, I decided to set up a suicide watch.”
A lot of vets went into law enforcement when they got out.
Becoming more acquainted with the work Harry had to do day to day, Hutch was glad that idea never crossed his mind.
“Unless they’re exceptional liars, seems none of them did know about the drugs,” Harry carried on.
“So any drug-related charges are off the table. That said, the five women who weren’t the true believers want us to throw the book at them.
Talked to the county attorney. She says she may be able to convince a jury of a kidnapping charge, even if, in essence, they came of their own free will. ”
That would be a neat trick, though one Hutch suspected would be doomed to fail.
“However, unlawful imprisonment and attempted rape are happening,” Harry said.
“Apparently, three of those five women didn’t want to be married.
In all their time here, they didn’t allow the consummation, and fortunately, the men didn’t take their fucked-up ideas of the natural order of things too far. But they gave it a go.”
Well, thank Christ for that.
“The only women who had children, outside Martin and Schrier, were legally married,” Harry told him. “They aren’t taking it that far. But they are filing for divorce and full custody, and to assist them in that, they want us to hit their soon-to-be ex-husbands with whatever we can throw at them.”
They’d entered another small house, and it made Hutch’s cabin look like a palace.
Spartan to extremes.
Doing without creature comforts simply to belong.
Hutch shook his head.
“I got reporters out the ass,” Harry went on as he again guided them out and started them toward the back shed.
“Meg’s had to call a town council meeting.
The only good news is, Lacey Diever is pleased as all hell.
No way that will is gonna hold up now. Not sure how all of this is gonna play out, since everything on this compound holds value.
Thinking the DEA or FBI will impound it, eventually auction it.
But luckily, that’s one thing I don’t have to deal with. ”
“Any sightings of Enstrom or his crew?”
“Lots of sightings,” Harry answered. “None of them have panned out. Still looking, brother.”
They entered the shed.
The false floor was open, the hole it exposed empty.
Harry moved to the other side, pressed the wall with a gloved hand, Hutch heard a click, and a hidden door opened.
“On the other side of this is a gate through the outer fence,” Harry explained. “Drop off and pick up happened through here, from the other side of the fence, so no congregants would see what was happening.”
“The DEA getting anything out of the ones who were caught?” Hutch asked.
Harry clicked the door closed while shaking his head.
“They’re not talking. I went to watch some of the interrogations, and they seem relaxed and just keep saying they’re members of The Lion and The Lamb, good, God-fearing people, and they know nothing about any drugs.
The DEA then asked why their fingerprints are on those totes and some of the baggies of fentanyl.
” Harry lifted one shoulder. “They’re totally flummoxed on how that could be. ”
“So you got evidence even if you got no confessions,” Hutch said.
Harry nodded. “Including the women, and even the men reporting that they were not allowed in that shed. If they wanted something out of it, they had to ask one of the soldiers for it. Agents are still gonna work them. See if they can make any deals that might lead us to where Enstrom and Burress might be heading or hunkering down. Shit like that takes time, though. And these aren’t hardened criminals, but I bet they’ll go down, do their sentence and get right back into the game without a moment’s hesitation. ”
“The thrill?” Hutch asked.
“Oh yeah,” Harry sighed.
They headed out and Harry nodded to someone beyond Hutch and came back to Hutch.
“Since you spent so much time looking at it from above, thought you might want to see it up close and get an update. But now I gotta get on.”
“Appreciate you, Harry.”
Harry clapped him on the arm and took off.
Hutch waited until after he was back under the crime scene tape before he tugged the protectors off his boots and pulled off the gloves.
He climbed into Mabel’s truck to do the errand, which was the reason he was driving Mabel’s truck.
Another reason: they were having dinner in town that night. Therefore, since he was already going to be there to deal with her truck, might as well just take her and pick her up.
She’d said, and he’d noticed, she was solitary.
Consequently, Hutch had to get his shit tight about what happened Saturday night.
In other words, he needed to back off.